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Stormhammer Assault Dreadnaught
The Stormhammer Assault Dreadnaught is a heavy warship based on a partial reverse engineering of a Rendili StarDrive ''Dreadnaught''-class Heavy Cruiser. Working with a disabled Dreadnaught taken from a local pirate group, Omega Shipyard engineers were able to replicate the general design of the Dreadnaught, but could not produce an armed, functioning replica. The Stormhammer is an extensive modification and modernization of the Dreadnaught, making use of more modern technology (though modern automation is still lacking, giving the Stormhammer a large crew complement). Designed by Pentam Quinn, the Stormhammer was one of the first capital ships to come out of Omega Shipyards. It was originally marketed as the Defender Dreadnaught. At one point, the design was lost, along with most of Omega Shipyards' designs, after an act of terrorism destroyed the shipyard's central computer core. The design was later recovered from the remains of the core, at which point it was renamed to the Stormhammer Assault Dreadnaught, as the Omega engineering staff of that period realized that the class would be better suited to the assault role than to defense. =Appearance= The Stormhammer’s main hull is similar to that of a standard Dreadnaught, but is stretched 100 meters to accommodate a larger reactor. The enlarged reactor also cuts the sizes of both the barracks and the cargo hold in half, in comparison to a standard Dreadnaught. Immediately distinguishing the Stormhammer from a standard Dreadnaught are six cube-shaped sections, each 215 meters wide, positioned three on each side of the ship, connected to the main hull by broad stub wings. These cubes each have six PAX launchers on the outer face; the vast internal volume of each cube is devoted entirely to ammunition storage for the launchers. =Armament= With 36 PAX launchers in total, and an enormous amount of ammunition for every one of them, the Stormhammer is capable of putting up a great concentration of warheads. The Stormhammer’s launchers, chosen because they did not use the power from the ship’s reactor (most of the additional power produced by the enlarged reactor was fed to the ship’s shields), are supplemented by energy armament mounted along the top and bottom of the central hull. The armament is vaguely similar to that of the Dreadnaught, though the Dreadnaught’s single and quad turbolasers have been sacrificed in favor of heavy turbolaser batteries, which offer less versatility and use more power (a requirement offset by updating the ship’s reactor to modern technology), but require less surface area and (more importantly) represent an increase in sheer firepower. 10 quad laser cannons were also added provide a modicum of energy-based defense from lighter craft. =Performance= The main downside of the Stormhammer class is its performance, or rather, its lack thereof. The Dreadnaught that served as the basis for the Stormhammer was not a very fast craft, and rather than sacrificing other attributes in order to attain acceptable performance, the Stormhammer’s designers decided to solve the performance problem by working around it, sacrificing any trace of speed or maneuverability in exchange for greater durability and armament. The ship’s PAX launchers and the associated ammunition bays add a lot of mass to the ship, but they also provide it with an omnidirectional attack capability to be used against any smaller ship that attempts to mount a flanking attack. The ship’s hull is also armored heavily, allowing it to absorb a considerable amount of damage. In order that the ship have some movement capacity in battle though, the designers added four pods to the back of the ship, a pair on top of the hull, and a pair on the bottom of it; each pod contains a thruster and an independent power source to run it. Category:Capital ShipsCategory:DreadnaughtsCategory:Assault Ships-Category:Muir_Corporation_ShipsCategory:Mirrodin